Underwater photography with the Olympus Mju/Stylus 1030 SW

Review by: Michael Heus

During a diving trip my Nikon D80 underwater set is always prepped and fully set for shooting macro, wide angle or the likes. This makes it unusable for taking pics above water or for a quick jump in the water to capture a group of dolphins or other unexpected stuff.

The Olympus Mju/Stylus 1030 SW thus looked to me as an excellent addition, mainly due to its robust and waterproof specifications.

The camera

The basic specifications of the 1030 SW:

• 10.1 Megapixels, 3.6x optical wide angle lens (28 – 102 mm), aperture f/3.5 - f/5.1
• Waterproof to 10 meters and shockproof up to 2.0 meter
• TruePic III image processor, digital image stabilisation, BrightCapture technology
• HyperCrystal II LCD of 2.7" cm (230.000 pixels)
• 24 scene modes, including 4 underwater
• Movie recording up to VGA resolution at 30fps, including underwater mode

More specs are listed on the 1030 SW camera page.

The four underwater scene modes preset the camera for different underwater conditions:

Underwater Snapshot: for taking pictures at the beach or in the pool. In this mode the white balance is set to cloudy and the flash is set to automatic.

Underwater Wide #1: for underwater landscape photos, like for example a coral reef. The white balance will be set to sunny, the flash is forced and the macro mode is enabled. The camera will zoom out fully, but the zoom can still be controlled to your liking.

Underwater Wide #2: for underwater action scenes, like e.g. fish swimming by. Just like Wide #2 mode, the white balance is set to sunny, but the flash and macro functions are now switched off. The camera also zooms out, but changing the zoom is not possible.

Underwater Macro: for taking underwater shots close to subjects. The camera will use the same settings as in Wide #1, the only difference that it will zoom in to the maximum.

The camera itself is warranted to operate at depths up to 10 meters (32.8 feet) for up to one hour. With the use of the optional PT-043 underwater housing, its operational depth can be extended to a maximum of 40 meters (131 feet).

For this review I tested the camera without an underwater housing.

Underwater performance

As I am accustomed to using a camera in a housing, it was a little awkward to just jump overboard with a "naked" camera to go snorkeling.

But after some free diving to a few meters depths and a fair number of test shots everything still worked fine and my trust was boosted. So I started to explore the capabilities of the scene modes.

In Macro mode you should pay close attention that the AF target mark lights up green: if you get closer than approximately 20-30cm to the subject and you press the shutter all the way the result will be out of focus. And although the LCD monitor is bright and large, it is not really easy to reliably judge whether a shot is fully in focus.

At sufficient distance this mode however works great, and this also allows the flash to fully illuminate the scenery for nice colors.

The little function and menu buttons are a bit difficult to operate when floating in the waves. It turns out to be quicker to change a scene mode by rotating the mode dial back and forth to SCN than it is by navigating the menu. The zoom and shutter buttons are operated easier.

In the Underwater Wide #1 mode many photos will suffer from a snow-like effect (see right photo). This so called backscatter is caused by the light of the camera's flash being reflected by particles in the water. If the camera would be used in an underwater housing with a diffuser this should be less of a problem.

The Wide #2 mode also does not show backscatter as the flash is then turned off. Then again, this mode does require sufficient sunlight to get colorful underwater photos. This mode is also useless when an external strobe is used as it should be triggered by the internal flash of the camera.

The Underwater Snapshot mode turned out to deliver the best results close to the surface. The abundance of light makes that the flash will not be used and thus there is no backscatter effect. And the cloudy white balance mixes in a little red, which make the photos better looking.

Finally I want to point out a nice feature: the built-in manometer. It shows you the atmospheric pressure and depth during shooting on the monitor, and will show a warning message when a water depth close to the maximum of 10 meters is reached. Just be sure to calibrate the camera beforehand!

Conclusion

The Mju/Stylus 1030 SW is a robust camera that can cope fine with the underwater environment at shallow depths and with sufficient sunlight. It delivers underwater photos that, sometimes after a little photoshopping, really capture the memories of the house reef at your holiday resort.

At greater depths it will be quite hard to get useable results, mainly due to the limited flash capabilities.

I regard this camera as a perfect companion next to my full-featured underwater set and I will make sure to always keep it in reach for those unexpected (underwater) moments.

Review by: Michael Heus

Check out more shots in the Mju 1030 SW gallery.

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